AOC: Being Morally Right Is More Important Than Being Factually Correct

Leah Barkoukis | January 07, 2019 7:30 AM

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t believe being factually correct is as important as being “morally right.”

In an interview with Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes," Ocasio-Cortez discussed being given four Pinocchios by the Washington Post over her tweet claiming that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could’ve paid for two-thirds of her Medicare-for-all proposal, arguing that people shouldn’t focus on the details of what she says, but rather on the morality of her overall argument.

$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.”

$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T.

That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.

And that’s before our premiums. https://t.co/soT6GSmDSG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 2, 2018

“If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees,” she said. “There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

Cooper pushed back, noting that being factually correct is important.

While she agreed, she said that when she does make a mistake she admits to being “clumsy … and then I restate what my point was but it’s not the same thing as the president lying about immigrants. It’s not the same thing at all.”